


How to Fall in Love in 5 Not-So-Easy Steps

by shadowfire125



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 07:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowfire125/pseuds/shadowfire125
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And Carlos thought romance in the normal world was difficult. Or: how Cecil manages to win Carlos over despite how weird he’s being about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Fall in Love in 5 Not-So-Easy Steps

1

Carlos was driving back to the lab he’d rented, having just concluded the press conference, when he decided to turn on his radio. A smooth voice drifted over the speakers, in the middle of explaining that Old Woman Josie’s salt had been taken by angels. Carlos made a mental note to interview Old Woman Josie about her angels as the voice moved on to report on the press conference that Carlos had just held.

“… _that by far we are the most scientifically interesting community in the US, and he had come to study just what is going on around here. He grinned, and everything about him was perfect, and I fell in love_ instantly.”

Carlos jerked on the wheel in surprise, swerving into the next lane and back again. The guy was joking, right? He’d tossed it out so casually that he couldn’t have been serious.

Could he?

The broadcaster moved on to talk about shadowy government agents (who Carlos had also noticed at the back of the crowd), and devolved into a tangled statement about people not knowing what they don’t yet know. This did not boost Carlos’ confidence in the radio host’s sanity, and wasn’t sure what that meant for the validity of the frankly unnerving confession.

\--

As Carlos traveled about the town with his assistants (five of them in total), he felt obligated to report his rather alarming discoveries to someone – preferably someone who could spread the word around town in a short period of time. Obvious solution: Night Vale Community Radio. He had one of his assistants call each incident in to the station, and told himself that foisting the task off on someone else was the most practical way to do it so that he could continue his work uninterrupted (coincidentally, it made certain he did not come into contact with the host).

Eventually he decided that he was going to be an _adult_ about this, and he was going to find out just who this guy was.

\--

Carlos parked in the tiny lot outside the squat, bland two-story building, and was about to step out of his dusty pickup truck when he belatedly realized “I want to find out who the hell this broadcaster is and why he declared his love for me over the radio” was not a good excuse to barge into the station. Grabbing the first scanner he saw in his glove box without paying attention to what it was for, he slid out of his car and headed straight into the building, trying to look and act like he belonged there and knew exactly what he was doing.

He was almost immediately intercepted by an intern, a girl probably barely out of high school with two thick black braids and a suspicious stare. “You’re that scientist guy, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yes,” Carlos said. “Yes, I am.”

“What’re you doing here?” she asked, casting a glance at the scanner in his hand, which had begun to beep faintly.

Carlos looked down at it, too. “Scanning for…” For some reason he was drawing a total blank on what exactly it was this piece of equipment _did_. “Scanning for materials,” he concluded.

Apparently in Night Vale, that was a good enough explanation. She nodded, the distrust in her expression receding a little. “We’re on commercial break, so you can go up to the broadcasting studio. Cecil will be happy to talk to you.”

_Cecil_. A name to the voice. Now to put a face to the name. Carlos hurried up the steps on the intern’s direction. As he grew closer to the top, the scanner in his hands began to beep louder, more worryingly. Carlos wished he could remember what it was for. He had been given a grant to study this town as one of the most anomalous places in the world, and as this was his first real project that he was in charge of, he’d overcompensated just a bit, buying a bunch of equipment he probably didn’t need. He’d have to check the inventory.

He was approaching the booth now, and the beeping was growing in speed and alarm. His knock on the door was answered with a cheerful, “Come in!”

Carlos opened the door and peered inside. It was a small room, the lighting a bit on the dim side and the walls an inoffensive shade of beige. There was an old wooden desk in the middle with an even older microphone sitting on it. A man was sitting at the desk, who immediately jumped to his feet the second he saw the scientist. “Carlos!” he exclaimed, and there was no doubt about who this person was. His voice was very distinctive. It was, in fact, the most distinctive thing about him. At first, at least. Carlos strained his focus, and suddenly Cecil snapped into clarity of a sort. The broadcaster was a bit on the taller side, Carlos supposed, and a bit on the skinnier side, after he’d managed to push past his first impression (not tall or short, not thin or fat). He still couldn’t quite get a grasp on Cecil’s features, but he could tell that the man had glasses, and a sky blue sweater vest over a crisp white shirt with its sleeves rolled up and a horrendous mauve tie. His forearms were covered in tattoos, which, Carlos realized with a lurch of his stomach, were constantly shifting over his skin, curling and uncurling. “What brings you here?”

“I’m scanning,” Carlos said automatically. “For materials.”

One thing he _could_ tell was that Cecil was beaming like the oncoming headlights of an eighteen-wheeler. “Wonderful!” he said.

The frantically beeping scanner did not seem to think that it was wonderful. “May I?” Carlos asked.

“Absolutely!” Cecil said.

Carlos approached warily, instinctively turning the scanner to Cecil as the oddest thing in the room. The little machine was beginning to sound very distressed. The only other object in the room was the microphone, so Carlos waved the scanner over that, and the scanner went _nuts._ He recoiled, the machinery almost rattling in his hand. Whatever was here, this equipment was extremely upset about it and Carlos did not want to be around anymore. “I think you should evacuate the building,” he told Cecil.

“Now, now,” Cecil said patiently. “I can hardly do that. I’m a professional after all.” A little red light at the base of the mic blinked. “The show’s about to come back on,” he said, then added brightly, “Why don’t you stay for an interview?”

Carlos shook his head rapidly.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go, then,” Cecil said, sounding genuinely sorry. “But I’m free once I’m off the air! Here’s my card.” Before Carlos could think about what was happening, Cecil had placed a little white rectangle with black print on it in his hand and was shooing him from the booth. “Call me!” he said cheerily, and then the door clicked shut, leaving Carlos blinking and bewildered in the empty hallway.

The scanner was still whining, so Carlos left the station as quickly as he could. Once he was safely in his car, he dropped the scanner on the passenger seat and banged his head on the steering wheel. What was _wrong_ with this town?

Carlos took a deep breath and decided to make a list of things he had learned after being in Night Vale for a little over half a day. Lists always helped him clear his head. 

1\. Finding your way into Night Vale was far harder than it should have been.  
2\. The house in Desert Creek out back of the elementary school doesn’t exist, even though it should.  
3\. There should be severe earthquakes but there aren’t.  
4\. Old Woman Josie has angels.  
5\. The local radio host is named Cecil.  
6\. Cecil says he is in love with you.  
7\. He doesn’t appear to be joking.  
8\. He _does_ appear to be a good source of information.  
9\. You’re not sure you want to use him as a source of information. He creeps you out.  
10\. You’re pretty sure you don’t have a choice.  
11\. There’s something wrong with the radio station.  
12\. You need to check your inventory.

Carlos rubbed his temples, where his hair was beginning to show a few small streaks of grey even though he had barely turned thirty-two ( _you worry too much, mijo_ , said his mother’s voice). That was far too long a list for such a short time spent here, and he had a feeling it was only going to get longer.

He drummed his fingers on the wheel. Somehow, out of all the oddities he’d encountered in Night Vale so far, the one his thoughts kept getting drawn back to was Cecil. 

Carlos resisted the urge to turn the radio back on, put the car in gear, and took off for his lab.

 

 

2

Carlos was beginning to regret not getting his hair cut before he left for Night Vale, because he really wasn’t sure about what kind of barbers this town would have. But his bangs kept falling into his face and it was getting really annoying, so he decided to risk it and stopped in at Telly the Barber’s and got what he thought was a decent haircut. It was such a normal experience, in fact, that it made Carlos a little nervous. Nothing normal happened in Night Vale. He was almost expecting some kind of backlash, a balancing of the weird scales.

The backlash did come, but from a completely different direction than Carlos thought it would, in the form of Cecil and his rather biased reporting habits. Using his sway as the Voice of Night Vale, he rained his fury down upon the poor, defenseless barber over the shearing of Carlos’ “perfect coif.”

Carlos couldn’t help but feel guilty about Telly’s new pariah status, especially since the haircut really wasn’t that bad. He’d definitely had worse.

This was becoming a problem. At first, he’d just thought Cecil’s waxing poetic over the air was harmless, if creepy, but after the Telly incident, Carlos was beginning to reevaluate this assumption. He was drawing a lot of stares when he walked down the street, and it was making him almost as uncomfortable as the way Cecil talked about him on the radio. He tried going to a town meeting about removing the warning sign and lead doors from Radon Canyon – because really, that seemed pretty important. But it seemed that he was the only one opposed to this idea (Old Woman Josie was more concerned about _lead poisoning_ , of all things), and when he stood up to voice his objections, the room went completely silent as everyone turned to look at him. After a long, uncomfortable moment, Carlos did the only thing he could think of to escape – pull out his phone and make it seem like he was up to something mysterious and important as he sprinted from the room. 

He took to staying in his lab as much as he could, sending his assistants out on errands while he shut himself inside and did calculations. But while he worked, he would tune in to Cecil’s show, because that was the easiest way to find out what was happening in Night Vale. There was another reason, though – it wasn’t something he could put into words, or even really realize outside of his subconscious, but he liked hearing Cecil compliment him, because even though it was superficial, it was rare that someone thought so highly of him.

 

 

3

Cecil’s admiration was beginning to scare Carlos a little. It had become a different kind of fear – not the “shit I have a stalker” fear, but the “no actually I’m not as perfect as you think I am and pretty soon you’re going to realize that and you’re going to be really disappointed” fear. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want to disappoint Cecil, didn’t want to crush the broadcaster’s cheery attitude towards him. If he had to guess, it was because Cecil had become a constant in the otherwise inconstant world of Night Vale, and Cecil was the only one who would _really_ talk to him about the strange happenings around town. They would bump into each other on the street and the usually eloquent radio host would turn red and stumble over his words as he asked how the science was going, and Carlos would rub the back of his neck nervously and laugh awkwardly as he replied with things like “there’s a corner in my lab that’s filled with despair” and “every other Thursday there’s a section of sidewalk that screams if you walk on it.” And Cecil would wish him luck and Carlos would twist his fingers together and say that he had somewhere to be even though he didn’t really. Cecil would say “oh” with a tinge of embarrassment and add “me too,” even though he probably didn’t either.

Carlos would go back to his lab and bang his head on his desk a few times, and consider spending a couple of quality minutes in the corner of despair, just to get it out of his system. He never did, though, because it would leave him with a lingering sense of dysphoria.

He had a lot of insecurities and anxieties, most of them social. He’d always been the kid with his nose stuck in a book, who answered every question in math and science correctly. By the end of eighth grade his copy of A Brief History of Time was battered and dog-eared from multiple readings, with highlighted sections and notes scribbled in the margins. More often than not his glasses were held together by scotch tape because his family was too poor to get him a new pair every time they were broken on the playground. High school was the worst because by that point he’d figured out that he found boys more interesting than girls, and that was just one more social crime added to his rap sheet. He made friends with the teachers instead of the students, and his physics teacher, a nice lady named Miss Haley, let him hang out in her classroom during breaks and after school. She would give him band-aids for his scrapes, which he said he got from tripping but she knew better, and lend him her favorite science fiction books. In retrospect, he probably wouldn’t have survived high school without her.

College was better because it was easier to find people like him, but even though he passed all his classes, he failed his relationships. He eventually gave up on dating when he was twenty-six and going for his masters because somehow he ended up picking the worst men to go out with and dedicated himself to science.

He was drawn to the idea of going to Night Vale because of those books Miss Haley would lend him, which had made him dream of things outside the realm of possibility and given him a hunger for leaping into the scientifically unknown.

And now he was in Night Vale, and of all the unexpected things he’d found here, Cecil was probably at the top of the list. Not just because he was a scientific anomaly in himself, but because of his open adoration of Carlos. Carlos squirmed under the attention, uncomfortable with being in the spotlight. He preferred melting into the background, going about his business as unobtrusively as possible. But Cecil had dragged him front and center and Carlos was _scared_ , because Cecil was endearing in his own weird way and Carlos was positive that when Cecil realized he wasn’t all that special and was in reality just awkward and geeky, Cecil would drop him like a hot potato. And that idea was _terrifying_ for reasons Carlos couldn’t quite name. 

Night Vale was turning out to be stressful for reasons beyond the fact that it broke several laws of reality on a daily basis.

 

 

4

None of the clocks in Night Vale were real.

Carlos had called Cecil earlier, to explain that time was moving slower in Night Vale and to get the word out about this. Cecil’s response ( _Neat!_ ) was not heartening, nor was his subsequent offer to go out for coffee sometime. This was a serious matter. He’d tuned in to the show to see if Cecil really _would_ make the announcement, and smacked his forehead when Cecil chose instead to relay their entire conversation over the air like a giddy schoolgirl. He would just have to continue his investigations on his own – the townspeople would probably be more interested in this new bit of gossip than reporting time anomalies.

Which lead him to his current dilemma.

After stabbing a particularly hostile gelatinous mass to death with a scalpel, he did the first thing he could think of: call Cecil (who was on his speed dial). The phone rang for a minute before going to voicemail, and he cursed silently. Of course Cecil wouldn’t answer, he was on air. He left a message anyway, and was in the middle of hurriedly explaining the situation when the hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he somehow became certain that there was someone at the door. Hanging up, he crept to the window and peered out, then called Cecil again because he didn’t know what else to do. He recoiled and hung up again when the man on the doorstep turned to look at him.

Things got fuzzy for a minute, and when his head cleared, he called Cecil once more, intent on finishing explaining the purpose of his call. He asked to meet up with Cecil, and hoped the excitable broadcaster wouldn’t take it the wrong way.

Of course he did, though. Carlos sighed as he listened to Cecil play the messages for everyone to hear. His stomach did a back flip when Cecil announced it was a date, and he resisted the urge to race into the bathroom to puke up his crippling anxiety.

Despite the fact that it was _not_ a date, Carlos found himself trying to look his best for his meeting with Cecil. When they met at the coffee shop, Cecil was wearing a tunic that was almost as ridiculous as his fur pants. Carlos felt a weird surge of affection at the sight, and battled his pounding his heart as he explained to Cecil that this wasn’t a date. Once he finished, he cringed a little, waiting for the crestfallen look and the disappointment.

Instead, Cecil said, “Taking it slow, of course!” And he smiled like he was happy to simply get the chance to be around Carlos and nothing else mattered.

Carlos couldn’t help but smile back.

 

 

5

Carlos stood shirtless in front of his bathroom mirror, trembling slightly as he peeled the bandages off his chest. He knew he should probably be leaving them on, but he just had to see. His torso was pockmarked with wounds approximately the size of quarters, which had been stitched shut by Teddy Williams, of all people. He poked at one and immediately regretted it. Those tiny people sure knew their weaponry. A wave of dizziness came over him, and he gripped the edge of the sink tightly, willing himself not to vomit. He’d almost died. Because he’d thought it was a spectacular idea to tromp around in a tiny city peopled with hostile citizens.

He’d almost _died_.

He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed, trying not to start hyperventilating. Without really paying attention to what he was doing, he fumbled for his phone and typed out a message for Cecil. The simple act of hitting _send_ calmed him somehow, and he re-applied the bandages with only semi-trembling hands.

He arrived at the parking lot of the Arby’s long before he expected Cecil to be there and sat with his legs dangling off the edge of his truck’s flatbed trunk, staring blankly up at the sky.

Cecil arrived in a hurry, screeching into the spot next to Carlos and at his side mere instants after the car door slammed shut. “What is it?” he asked almost frantically. “Wh-what danger are we in? What mystery needs to be explored?”

Carlos felt a smile twitch at his lips as he continued to look at the sky. Cecil never assumed for a moment that Carlos had summoned him for personal reasons, never assumed anything. “Nothing,” Carlos said, shaking his head. “After everything that happened… I just wanted to see you.” He finally turned to look at Cecil.

Cecil had frozen completely, staring at Carlos like he couldn’t believe it, didn’t dare to breathe, barely dared to hope. “Oh?” he said tremulously.

Carlos looked back at the setting sun. “I used to think it was setting at the wrong time,” he said. “But then I realized that time doesn’t work in Night Vale, and that none of the clocks are real. Sometimes, things seem so strange or malevolent, and then you find that underneath, it was something else altogether, something pure and innocent.”

“I know what you mean,” Cecil replied, unwinding a little.

Carlos wondered if he really did know, and gave Cecil his attention. The broadcaster didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands and would only meet Carlos’ gaze for a few fleeting seconds before glancing away again, his blush spreading all the way to the tips of his ears.

Cecil did understand, Carlos realized. Cecil understood a great many things. He even understood Carlos, had from the very beginning. His crush had never been superficial, despite all appearances. Cecil had seen Carlos and seen right through him, and thought that everything about him was perfect. Even though Carlos was not perfect, he was perfect to Cecil, whose affection was not blind. He wondered if maybe it had something to do with that third eye of Cecil’s he saw sometimes, if that was how Cecil understood so much about Carlos.

Carlos wished it hadn’t taken him so long to realize that Cecil’s love really was something pure and innocent, wished it hadn’t taken a near death experience.

Cecil had sat down next to Carlos, and his presence was comforting.

There were other things happening while they sat here. The tiny army was marching on Night Vale, there was that suspicious man in a tan jacket, and he would probably return to his lab to find that his seismographs had gone off the charts. But for once, he decided, he could deal with all of that later.

He’d almost lost this. He’d come so close to never having this moment – sitting with Cecil on the trunk of his car, watching the lights above the Arby’s.

He reached over and put his hand on Cecil’s knee to reassure himself that the broadcaster really was there, and he was pretty sure Cecil wouldn’t mind. Still, he held his breath as he waited for some kind of response, exhaling softly when Cecil rested his head on Carlos’ shoulder.

The dry desert air was cooling rapidly and the sky (mostly void, partly stars) was endless and incomprehensible, reminding Carlos that there was so much that he didn’t know.

But what he did know was that Cecil was here and real and warm, and that everything was going to be okay.

At least, as okay as it got in Night Vale.


End file.
